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Being able to use an unlocked phone on a competitor's network only matters if the carriers are also required to offer plans that do not include the built-in hardware costs they all carry today. I've owned a number of phones that I've bought from third-parties and just transferred my SIM chip. (I was on AT&T which is a GSM carrier.) However there was no option that allowed me to continue my subscription at a lower rate because I was no longer paying for the included phone.

Support for unlocking phones might play well in the techie community, but its actual value to most consumers is pretty limited if it doesn't change pricing.

The Walt Disney Company had long allowed same-sex celebrations in a limited way on its grounds, like in banquet halls. But in 2007, it began allowing same-sex couples to buy high-end wedding packages, which can include elaborate ceremonies, Disney characters and public displays at its theme parks and on its cruises.

Despite that change in policy, Ms. Higashi found that no same-sex wedding had ever occurred at Tokyo Disney Resort. She reported on her blog and on Twitter that she had inquired about weddings at Tokyo Disney Sea, a part of the Disney Resort. But when it became apparent to the organizers that her partner was female, Ms. Higashi reported, she was asked if one of them could wear a tuxedo — so that other visitors to the park would not feel uncomfortable.

Despite the endorsement by Disney, the marriage itself has no legal standing.

As Iranians look forward to their Persian new year festivities, they stock up on the pistachios that they traditionally serve over the holiday period.

But this year they are boycotting their favourite nuts to protest soaring prices that they blame on Iran’s plummeting currency and high inflation, which are partly a result of international sanctions on Iran’s nuclear programme.

In text messages and Facebook posts they accuse merchants of hoarding pistachios to sell them at higher rates before the new year, or Norouz, holidays that begin March 21 and urge consumers not to buy them in protest.

“I received a text message not to buy pistachios, but did not need it because I cannot afford them anyway,” said Khadijeh, a 35-year-old housewife whose husband is a truck driver.

Pistachio farmers, along with other non-oil exporters are taking advantage of the plummeting value of the Iranian rial, which has fallen by about 50 per cent since last year, to boost their overseas business in the region at the expense of domestic markets.

“Many pistachio farmers feared their farms would go bust a year and a half ago but the strengthening of US dollar has led to a boom and made pistachio production economically justifiable,” said Mohsen Jalalpour, head of Iran’s Pistachio Association, a non-governmental organisation.

Food imports and exports are not subject to international sanctions, although US banking sanctions have affected all businesses. Traders say Iran’s state authorities want to ban pistachio exports to support the domestic market but there are doubts that this will be implemented because of fears that Iran would lose its international market share to the US, its main rival and political enemy, which has overtaken Iran to become the world’s biggest pistachio producer in recent years.

Iran has been a pistachio producer since the fifth century BC and pistachios remain one of country’s leading non-oil exports – more than the country’s famous hand-woven carpets, saffron or dates.

For many Iranians it is heartbreaking to see their beloved pistachios becoming increasingly unaffordable.

This time last year, one kilo of high-quality pistachios cost IR200,000. This year, however, a kilo goes for between IR540,000 and IR780,000 for nuts of the same quality.

In recent days, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has forced shops to sell pistachios at IR300,000 per kilo, but the intervention has so far had little effect on prices.

At Tavazo different varieties of high-quality pistachios with wide-open shells are sold at market prices. On a small shelf next to them sit low-quality pistachios that look more like small chickpeas on sale at the official rate.

“The pistachio market is confused now and farmers and exporters do not know whether to supply the domestic market or keep their pistachios [in warehouses],” said Amir Hossein Motamed-Nia, a pistachio dealer. “They prefer to export pistachios and receive hard currencies.”

Meanwhile, as sanctions have fuelled inflation, which is officially 28.7 per cent but believed to be far higher, serving pistachios could have a significant message during Norouz when families socialise over nuts, fruit and tea during the two-week holiday.

Yalda, 30-year-old woman who works at a beauty salon, doubted the pistachio campaign would have any significant impact. “Many of our customers say they do not buy pistachios, but I am sure most families will serve expensive fruit and nuts during Norouz to save face and give the impression that their economic situation is not bad.”

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When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Here’s a moment in Asian corporate history: Samsung Electronics is buying a stake in Sharp, in the first investment by a South Korean group in a big Japanese company in consumer electronics, one of Japan’s flagship industries.

Iran arrested the managing director and political editor of a pro-reform daily on Wednesday, with the semi-official Fars news agency saying their detentions were linked to the publication of a letter from a former president about media freedom

This kind of investment will be detrimental for Samsung in the long run. Sure they acquire the ability to produce 60+' TVs at a lower cost, but their corporate policy of rushing products into the market is going to ruin their sales.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

This kind of investment will be detrimental for Samsung in the long run. Sure hey acquire the ability to produce 60+' TVs at a lower cost, but their corporate policy of rushing products into the market is going to ruin their sales.

I am (relatively) happy with my Samsung Galaxy S3. Then again I don't really have any brand loyalty to any manufacturer of any product whatsoever ..

This kind of investment will be detrimental for Samsung in the long run. Sure they acquire the ability to produce 60+' TVs at a lower cost, but their corporate policy of rushing products into the market is going to ruin their sales.

Meh, given that everyone is rushing products into the market, the one who is able to get the best products at the lowest prices will win.

Meh, given that everyone is rushing products into the market, the one who is able to get the best products at the lowest prices will win.

Not exactly. LG does better stuff at lower prices but Samsung still wins.

It is about market reach. Then again, it is this kind of pressure that makes companies like this....Samsung bought out Sharp so they could outsource the production of large LEDs and focus more on their OLED R&D and production. But almost everyone is able to meet their own target marker demand so Samsung's attempt to poach sales could be bad for their other product lines.

Sharp basically got free lunch. And with rumours of Samsung's internal logistics issue......I think willx and you would know what I am talking about.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Is China about to collapse? That question has been front and center in the past weeks as the country completes its leadership transition and after the exposure of its various real estate bubbles during a widely watched 60 Minutes exposé this past weekend.

Concerns about soaring property prices throughout China are hardly new, but they have been given added weight by the government itself. Recognizing that a rapid implosion of the property market would disrupt economic growth, the central government recently announced far-reaching measures designed to dent the rampant speculation. Higher down payments, limiting the purchases of investment properties, and a capital gains tax on real estate transactions designed to make flipping properties less lucrative were included.

These measures, in conjunction with the new government’s announcing more modest growth targets of 7.5 percent a year, sent Chinese equities plunging and led to a slew of commentary in the United States saying China would be the next shoe to drop in the global system.

Yet there is more here than simple alarm over the viability of China’s economic growth. There is the not-so-veiled undercurrent of rooting against China. It is difficult to find someone who explicitly wants it to collapse, but the tone of much of the discourse suggests bloodlust. Given that China largely escaped the crises that so afflicted the United States and the eurozone, the desire to see it stumble may be understandable. No one really likes a global winner if that winner isn’t you.

The need to see China fail verges on jingoism. Americans distrust the Chinese model, find that its business practices verge on the immoral and illegal, that its reporting and accounting standards are sub-par at best and that its system is one of crony capitalism run by crony communists. On Wall Street, the presumption usually seems to be that any Chinese company is a ponzi scheme masquerading as a viable business. In various conversations and debates, I have rarely heard China’s economic model mentioned without disdain. Take, as just one example, Gordon Chang in Forbes: “Beijing’s technocrats can postpone a reckoning, but they have not repealed the laws of economics. There will be a crash.”

The consequences of a Chinese collapse, however, would be severe for the United States and for the world. There could be no major Chinese contraction without a concomitant contraction in the United States. That would mean sharply curtailed Chinese purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds, far less revenue for companies like General Motors, Nike, KFC and Apple that have robust business in China (Apple made $6.83 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from $4.08 billion a year prior), and far fewer Chinese imports of high-end goods from American and Asian companies. It would also mean a collapse of Chinese imports of materials such as copper, which would in turn harm economic growth in emerging countries that continue to be a prime market for American, Asian and European goods.

China is now the world’s second-largest economy, and property booms have been one aspect of its growth. Individual Chinese cannot invest outside of the country, and the limited options of China’s stock exchanges and almost nonexistent bond market mean that if you are middle class and want to do more than keep your money in cash or low-yielding bank accounts, you buy either luxury goods or apartments. That has meant a series of property bubbles over the past decade and a series of measures by state and local officials to contain them. These recent measures are hardly the first, and they are not likely to be the last.

The past 10 years have seen wild swings in property prices, and as recently as 2011 the government took steps to cool them; the number of transactions plummeted and prices slumped in hot markets like Shanghai as much as 30, 40 and even 50 percent. You could go back year by year in the 2000s and see similar bubbles forming and popping, as the government reacted to sharp run-ups with restrictions and then eased them when the pendulum threatened to swing too far.

China has had a series of property bubbles and a series of property busts. It has also had massive urbanization that in time has absorbed the excess supply generated by massive development. Today much of that supply is priced far above what workers flooding into China’s cities can afford. But that has always been true, and that housing has in time been purchased and used by Chinese families who are moving up the income spectrum, much as U.S. suburbs evolved in the second half of the 20th century.

More to the point, all property bubbles are not created equal. The housing bubbles in the United States and Spain, for instance, would never had been so disruptive without the massive amount of debt and the financial instruments and derivatives based on them. A bursting housing bubble absent those would have been a hit to growth but not a systemic crisis. In China, most buyers pay cash, and there is no derivative market around mortgages (at most there’s a small shadow market). Yes, there are all sorts of unofficial transactions with high-interest loans, but even there, the consequences of busts are not the same as they were in the United States and Europe in recent years.

Two issues converge whenever China is discussed in the United States: fear of the next global crisis, and distrust and dislike of the country. Concern is fine; we should always be attentive to possible risks. But China’s property bubbles are an unlikely risk, because of the absence of derivatives and because the central government is clearly alert to the market’s behavior.

Suspicion and antipathy, however, are not constructive. They speak to the ongoing difficulty China poses to Americans’ sense of global economic dominance and to the belief in the superiority of free-market capitalism to China’s state-managed capitalism. The U.S. system may prove to be more resilient over time; it has certainly proven successful to date. Its success does not require China’s failure, nor will China’s success invalidate the American model. For our own self-interest we should be rooting for their efforts, and not jingoistically wishing for them to fail.

Did you Americans outsource your property operations to China too? Why are they imitating you?

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

China's economic reach is many times bigger than that of Japan during 1989. China's crash won't just affect the US, it will be a global depression bad enough for an alien race to invade us.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.